My Grandpa once told me “its never too early to cease giving a shit.”  This response came after running to him, tears and snot cascading down my face when some kids at the park had told me that my new hat was something only geeks would wear.  At the time, like most things grandpa told me, I didn’t get it and certainly wasn’t comforted by it.  But in his own way, grandpa was letting me in on the secrets to happiness cultivated and cured over a lifetime of struggles, triumphs and mentorship.

My first clue should have been Christmas dinner 1991.  The adults sat at a separate table from the kids.  They must have been talking about something serious when I ran up, towel for a cape and turkey bones as vampire teeth.  I jumped on to grandpas lap and made some statement about a desire to suck his blood.  Never taken by surprise grandpa simply let my momentum carry me over his lap and on to the opposing floor without so much as a hand touching me.  When I stood up to cry he looked me right in the eye and said “look, don’t talk.”  He then scooped me onto his lap and continued the conversation as if nothing had happened.

What I know now that I didn’t know then is that he was telling me “hey kid, im old…I lived in lean times, fought in the war, have had 20 times more friends than you have and watched some of them die.  I have worked in several trades, drank too much wiskey, loved a women…or two, traveled to more countries than you even know exist and have read more books that you lazy kids these days probably ever will.  I have spent a lifetime of struggle to learn the secret to happiness.  If you want in on it stop acting like a godamn kid and soak in my wisdom.”

Sure my grandpa was an abrasive man and certainly didn’t know how to talk to children, but as time went on I learned a lot from him.  At first, all I took out of our interactions was how to out swear my pears by stringing together poems of intricately selected curses, but as maturity sets in I start to see his endless rambles for the disguised life lessons they were.  I think he knew I would get it, even if it wasn’t obvious at first.  On the other hand maybe he was just a grumpy old asshole.